The Choices of Raoul de Chagny
by Igenlode Wordsmith
Summary: "If I had any courage, I should have left you years ago": what effect will a devastating bout of drunken honesty have on Christine's marriage? And - with the 'Persephone' already two days out from Cherbourg - is it too late to avert the tragedy of Coney Island? A love story with a difference. R/C
1. What Little We Deserve

_A/N: Continuity is Lloyd Webber ("Phantom of the Opera"/"Love Never Dies") with sizeable helpings of the Leroux novel for the backstory where not actively contradicted in the musicals: the only thing I have deliberately changed from the musicals is that Raoul's parents both died (as in Leroux) while he was still a boy (although as per Lloyd Webber, he holds the title of Vicomte and not Comte de Chagny!) Specifically, the story is dated very precisely to 1907, which is supposedly the setting for "Love Never Dies" (whether or not this is consistent with the time-period for "Phantom"...) It is also tied definitely to the events and lyrics of the original London production, rather than the revised version - largely because a number of the specific lines I referenced here were among those subsequently removed in revision. I suspect this may have some relevance to the colossal struggles I myself had in getting this stuff to work together!_

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**Chapter 1: What Little We Deserve**

Christine de Chagny unclasped the single string of pearls she had worn at dinner, laid them carefully aside into the worn shagreen case that had once held the de Chagny rubies, and began to loosen the pins from the piled masses of her hair. Far below, men toiled in the stokeholds of the great Atlantic liner, and vast masses of machinery rocked back and forth with the regularity of clockwork in the beating heart of the ship; but the power that sent the ocean churning far astern in the _Persephone_'s wake made itself felt only as the faintest of steady vibrations in the staterooms high above, and the electric light above the mirror glowed without a flicker.

Nothing but the best for the great soprano Christine Daaé... first-class tickets from Cherbourg on the Hamburg-Amerika Line, flowers in her cabin as she boarded, dinner tonight at the captain's table... Her eyes met those of the weary reflection in the mirror, and acknowledged the bitterness there. That young man, von Enck — would he have paid all those fulsome compliments to the simplicity of her taste if he had known just how few jewels she had left to wear? Would that pompous English colonel have shown her quite such marked attentions if he and the other guests had guessed the true extent of the Chagnys' debts? And would she have been spared the constant, gushing expectations of enthusiasm for all things American — and for her great future in the New World — if they'd had even the slightest idea of the sordid mercenary necessity that was taking her across the Atlantic, on a contract she had simply been unable to refuse?

Raoul — she and Raoul needed the money. It was as simple as that. So Christine Daaé had been hired, body and soul, by the highest bidder; tickets and bouquets dispatched, in a show of favour, to tighten the gilded chains. And now she was to sing in New York, for a preposterous fee whose very size would doubtless be blazoned as an attraction on the billboards: "_The Soprano of the Century, At Enormous Expense"_... Bitterness deepened at the corners of her mouth, where two fine lines had begun to form themselves.

And Raoul — Raoul, descending one step behind her on the grand staircase yet again, as the young officers jostled among themselves to escort her to the table — Raoul, who on that polyglot table had let slip no word of anything but French, and no hint save for the ever-refilling depths of his glass that he understood one half of what was being said — Raoul had endured the evening at her side with the same savage, impotent misery that was devouring the husband she had so much loved, that was driving them apart month by month and year by year.

Christine let fall a handful of hairpins one by one, and dropped her head into her hand, fingers massaging unconsciously at her temples. Von Enck had showered her with flowery praises. Raoul de Chagny had not even returned her tentative smile.

She got up abruptly, leaving her toilette half-finished. In the far room, she could hear the sound of trunks being opened. "Célestine?"

A gruff sound that might have been "Madame", or simply an unspecific retort. Christine wished, yet again, that they could have brought Mathilde: Mathilde, who had spent her life down at Chagny under the old Vicomtesse, and who had welcomed and befriended her new young mistress in those first uncertain weeks in the great house with its staff. Mathilde, who had chased after Raoul when he had been no more than a tubby tow-headed infant, who had recited tales of his boyhood exploits with a relish that raised a blush to the grown man's cheeks for Christine to kiss away, laughing; Mathilde, whose wisdom had calmed Christine in the months that the child grew within her, whose gnarled hand had held hers during the endless all-consuming struggle of his birth, who had tended her through the long months of weakness that followed; Mathilde who, twenty years older, had let a toddling Gustave run rings around her even as Raoul had once done, and who had whipped him soundly on the one and only occasion when he had escaped her vigilance, at the age of seven, and terrified his mother by almost falling into the lake. Mathilde, who had somehow known the secret, these last few years, of easing the harsh lines from Raoul's face, granting whatever absolution he seemed to seek, at times when even Christine was shut out; it had hurt Christine more than she could admit, then, to find herself powerless, but it was to old Mathilde's influence that she had owed those last snatched weeks of happiness down at Chagny, when Raoul had laughed again, a little, and smiled at Gustave's nonsense instead of snapping, and on one, long-lost occasion — locked deep and precious and painful in her heart — had dropped suddenly to one knee before breakfast in the dew on the terrace, and poured out a passionate, incoherent avowal.

A tear spilled over, treacherous and hot, and Christine thrust the memory down almost violently, piling on top of it long, stifling weeks at Monte Carlo with Raoul plunging deeper into the grip of the table-sharks, endless empty evenings left waiting alone in their town-house for his return, concerts he could only endure in a haze of drink, and mornings made hideous by the uncertain temper and sore head that ensued... If she could only pile up grievances — if she could only pretend, even to herself, that this was the real Raoul, not the husband she so desperately missed — if she could only keep from crying —

Christine de Chagny wiped cold cream across her cheeks and forehead with a steady hand, pulled the rest of her hairpins free with a tug, and coiled her hair swiftly at the nape of her neck. Mathilde was too set in her ways now to travel to Paris, let alone to America. Already six months in arrears with the servants' wages, she could not advance them the money needed to induce them abroad. So it was the unsatisfactory Célestine — or nothing.

Sometimes Christine thought she would have preferred nothing. Célestine Bribot, second cousin to Raoul's valet, had sold up her milliner's shop to emigrate to America, where her nephew, who had sent for her, had set up a thriving business of his own. In return for a free passage, she had grudgingly agreed to help look after Gustave — "only on the voyage, mind" — but she was at pains to let it be known that she had never been 'in service' in her life, and was not about to start now. It was her insistence on making this status clear to Madame de Chagny at every opportunity that was wearing, to say the least.

More crashes from beyond the inner door: if the woman didn't take care, she would wake Gustave. Sighing, Christine pulled a wrapper around the shoulders of her dress, and went to find out.

Gustave, by some mercy, was still asleep, curled into his customary nest of blankets despite Célestine's perpetual determination to 'tuck him in'; he had slipped one hand beneath his cheek in an unconscious echo of Raoul. They were so very alike in so many ways — as if to mock her, Christine thought, smoothing back the fair curls with a tenderness that belied the old irresolute ache. So very like... and how could she be _certain_, after all? A small Gustave had worshipped Raoul — had made them all laugh, modelling his every gesture on the young Vicomte's own — but surely, surely her son had never woken to see Raoul nestled into the pillows just so? So many mornings in those long-ago sunlit uplands; so many awakenings... and so long gone.

Her husband slept late now, in his dressing-room, and left her to wake alone. And Gustave's father... showed more clearly in the boy with every year that passed. The cheeks, the eyes, the sturdy limbs, the sunny curls: all could so easily have been Raoul's, and she'd told herself for years that it might still be true. Hoped, even; double betrayal.

But the likeness only mocked, these days, taunting with its might-have-been. She knew, too well, what to look for... and she was sure, all but sure. Before the sunlight, there had been darkness, and pity, and loneliness become drowning intoxication. And now — and now, there was Gustave.

She bent to brush a kiss gently across his forehead and turned to reprimand Célestine. The woman had their trunks standing upright all over the cabin, opened concertina-fashion, shoes and bags spilling out: she had stopped short at festooning Gustave's bed in her search, but everything else from the washstand to Célestine's own berth was draped with dresses, chemises, spencers, and underwear of all descriptions. And she was continuing to slam open drawers and pull out books in an obviously fruitless frustration.

"Really, Célestine, you should make less noise... and what on earth is it you are looking for?"

"Monsieur Gustave has no clean shirts." A self-righteous sniff that conveyed a clear suggestion of satisfaction at finding Gustave's mother wanting. "Only two days on board, and no fresh linen to be found — the son of a Vicomte, and no better provided for than some ill-begotten brat —"

"Enough!" Ten years had given that Vicomte's wife a measure of aristocratic hauteur when she chose; and besides, Célestine's words had fallen all too apt upon her own thoughts.

"Perhaps Monsieur Gustave's clothing is in Monsieur le Vicomte's luggage?" she suggested, more gently, as the older woman bridled. "We packed and left in some confusion — there may have been a mistake —"

"Some mistake," Célestine said under her breath, hands on her hips as she surveyed the chaos in the half-open trunks, and Christine's own expression hardened.

"Doubtless you will be able to put things in better order, madame. I leave it to you — unless you would prefer that I do so, and that you should take the part of approaching Monsieur le Vicomte? No, I had thought not."

But any satisfaction at seeing Célestine momentarily quelled ebbed, even as she drew her skirts about her and closed the door, with the knowledge of her coming confrontation with Raoul. She sat down again a moment in front of the mirror, trying to gather her courage; trying to ignore the jeering voice that wondered what had become of their marriage.

_And just when did every question become a confrontation?_ The face in the mirror was strained and pale. _Oh, Raoul._

Christine de Chagny pulled the wrapper more closely around her shoulders, took a long shallow breath, and slipped out of her stateroom into the corridor outside.


	2. In Hell, I imagine

_...in which Raoul reaches a verdict..._

**Chapter 2. "In Hell, I imagine"**

The sounds of the ship were a little more intrusive here; for all the panelling, faint metallic notes carried along the passages from the _Persephone_'s far-distant engines or from the working of her plates as she shouldered aside the oncoming seas. An indistinct voice drifted down from out on deck: somewhere further aft, there was a hint of music being played, and the buzz of a gathering. Behind a cabin door close by, someone laughed.

Christine glanced swiftly up and down, but the corridor was mercifully empty. Feeling ridiculously exposed, she let the door close softly behind her and took the few steps needed to knock for admission to her husband's cabin next door. After tonight's dinner, she could guess only too well at the mood he would be in; but to hesitate out here was to invite humiliation, caught out in apparent intrigue. The raised brows of passing strangers were more than, at this moment, she was ready to face.

She tapped again on the stateroom door, more urgently, and this time got an indistinct snarl in response that might have included the words "come in". Taking this, correctly, to mean that the cabin was not locked, Christine let herself quickly in and closed the door behind her, backing up against the panelling as she came under Raoul's glare.

"You — I thought it was the steward." It was a less than gracious welcome, even by his recent standards. With a sinking feeling, she saw that there was a half-empty glass at his elbow and an all-too-familiar glazed look behind the frown. He had taken off his coat and collar, and removed the links from his shirt-sleeves, but otherwise he had made no visible gesture towards preparing for bed since she had left him almost an hour previously. She wondered, sometimes, if he slept at all.

"So to what do I owe this pleasure?" There was no trace of slurring in his voice; but then, these days, there never was. "Not a sudden craving for my company, I take it. Or would that not, after all, be too much to hope for?"

"Please, Raoul—" Faced with his heavy irony, she had no answer, as ever. "Please let's not fight. I just need some clothes... for Gustave..."

The cabin was not a match for her own, but smaller, with no inner room for dependents or child. One trunk stood in the corner, still corded up, and the other had been upended and opened in almost the same chaos as she had left her own. A pair of razors lay on the washstand and several shirts had been flung across the foot of the bed, but otherwise Raoul had made no attempt to unpack. By all appearances he'd made little enough attempt at any sort of packing in the first place: finding them Célestine Bribot had been the valet's last generous gesture upon leaving in lieu of unpaid wages. Christine thought it entirely probable that her husband, thrown back abruptly onto his own devices, had simply tossed the spare shirts she had laid out for Gustave into the trunk along with his own.

But Raoul was sprawled there in his chair, long legs jutting across her path, and she shrank from pushing past. "Please—"

A brisk, professional rap at the door behind her sent her scurrying abruptly across the cabin, grasping the back of the other chair with both hands in a shrinking defensive move. The steward, smartly uniformed, entered in response to Raoul's impatient reply, crossed swiftly to the table to pick up the empty glass as Raoul drained it, and set down the fresh drink from the tray that he carried. A moment later and he was gone, in well-trained, deferential silence.

Her husband made no move. "Well? You had better come and fix the problem, had you not — whatever it is. The perfect wife and mother, as always. And no doubt the fault was mine."

His voice had thickened, and Christine winced. "Darling, no—"

She caught his hand as he reached for the glass again, and felt his fingers grip her wrist almost painfully, clinging like those of a child.

"_In vino veritas,_" Raoul de Chagny said softly, bitterness twisting inward like a blade in his voice. "For the fault _**is**_ mine, and we both know it—"

His grip compelled her down, and she pulled free in unthinking panic. Saw, too late, the lost look in his eyes.

"I disgust you, don't I." It wasn't a question. _Lost: lost and drowning..._ One hand clenched, nails biting into his palm. "God knows I disgust myself..."

He thrust himself to his feet suddenly, violently, sending the little table and its glass crashing unheeded together to the floor. "Christine—"

But the reek of spilled liquor was sharp between them, and when he reached for her she froze; and after a moment his outstretched arms fell back, slowly, as if to touch her was too much to bear.

"I knew I was losing you — I've been losing you for such a long time... But I never dreamed the day would come when you would be afraid of me." The words were very quiet, and Christine cried out.

"Raoul, no — we—"

"We?" Her husband had turned away; had dropped to one knee beside the fallen table, and was setting it upright, carefully and methodically. His eyes were on his task. "Christine — is there even a 'we' for us?"

It was not the words; not just the words. It was the dreadful dragging finality of it that caught at her heart — life and hope and everything that might have been, draining away through their fingers. And the Raoul she'd loved was lost, so lost, trapped even as she was in this strange stilted nightmare—

"There was a summer once, in Paris beneath the trees." Raoul's gaze at last sought out her own as he rose, and it was she who could not bear to meet it. "There was a summer once... when I would have sworn to tear out my own heart sooner than let anything hurt you. A summer, and a winter, and a long golden spring. And yet now hurt is all I ever bring you."

One hand flung up against her protest: _let's not pretend..._

"Do you think I'm proud of it? Do you think I can't see—" His voice rose, cracked: began again on the low ebb of a breath. "Do you think _**this**_—" a gesture to his own state— "is because I can live with myself?"

He backed away a quick step as she tried to speak, as if to ward her off; stumbled back against the side of the bed and stood there breathing hard, with half the cabin between them, and the hectic glitter of drink like unshed tears in his eyes.

"I've been losing you for so long — to the child, to the world, to my own blind folly — for the more I feared to lose you, the more I drove you away—" The back of one hand wiped across his mouth as if unconsciously. "All those months of illness after Gustave was born; and then the years since, with the child, always the child. The child in your room tonight, while I—"

He caught himself up, on a laugh that was no laugh at all. "Oh, you've no need to look like that, I've no intention of pressing marital relations on you. The doctors made that clear enough. 'No more children or no more wife; it is for the husband to make sure, monsieur'... and we've made sure, haven't we, very sure..."

She could have wept: for the hurt in him, for the waste of it — _all these years and you let me think_—

And now her husband stood there, swaying slightly, and there was no comfort for either of them.

"Then the dinners — the galas, once you were well enough to sing. Everywhere, the sensation: the return of Christine Daaé. Crowds outside the carriage — cards, flowers, admirers — every would-be young composer with an aria in your name, on your doorstep. On our doorstep, Christine, but it was no longer ours, we — you — belonged to all the world, and Paris was no longer our haven. Toscanini — Puccini — La Scala — Venice: _you must be so proud, signor, of your wife_. Evening after evening in hotels, in card-rooms, every night of the tour, as music swept you away from me, as we — you — were lionized by the ignorant and the vain: and what kind of man was I, some petty-bourgeois shopkeeper, to resent my own wife's success? What did that make me? The Vicomte de Chagny should have been proud of you — so proud—" The words were torn from him on a groan, and she found her voice at last.

"Raoul, you were proud of me on that tour, you told me so often — you hated it, I knew, that's why we came home, but you made me feel so needed, so much wanted, among all those strangers — I could never have borne it alone—"

"Alone—" A bitter echo. "As we were alone in the Jardin des Tuileries that summer, when your kiss was forestalled by three star-struck young men with notebooks. As we were alone at Chagny, with Gustave clinging round your skirts and a gaggle of maids enchanted by his every step. As we were alone at the salon of Madame de Vireville, with every journalist and scribbler in town clustered around your chair for the honour of handing you a glass of negus... And only the bottom of my own glass could blur that distance, with an ugly snarl to amend the folly of my pride — and when you held out your hand to draw me back, I let it fall and turned aside. Three years wed, of that lifetime we'd dreamed of spending together... and what did I have left to give you? Neither my body for shelter nor my soul to soar beside you in a world that was whirling you away; and everything else we might have had was curdled in the dregs of our happiness until I could scarcely bear to see myself with sober eyes. What little you asked of me I threw back in your face — and your love, your pity — oh God, your _**pity**_—"

He sank down abruptly on the edge of the bed with a thud of springs, and dropped his face between shaking hands.

"Raoul, darling—" She let the wrapper slip from her shoulders, catching up her skirts, but her husband's muffled words froze her in mid-movement.

"Don't. Just — don't."

A dreadful silence, harsh with gulping breath, as she fought to keep the tears from her own eyes. Deep below, the _Persephone_'s engines thrummed out their churning beat.

"Your music—" Raoul dragged the crook of his sleeve across his face and looked up. He had his voice, at least, under control. The words were sad and infinitely far away.

"Christine, your music... you were the most beautiful thing I ever heard. I could never..." Almost a laugh. "I could never... find the same thrill, no matter what the stakes. No matter how high the loss... It doesn't matter, you know, after a while: win or lose. You put your life on the line, double, redouble — anything to feel alive again, to feel that rush. And when you wake... to see what you have become... you plunge deeper each night to forget. And then one day you can't escape the whispers — the contempt. The demands..."

One hand passed across his eyes, briefly, as if to wipe clean a momentary spasm.

"So then you take your wife to America. For money. To sell the last thing left to you — her art. Her name."

It was a steady, dispassionate recital that frightened her more than despair; pitiless clarity that left no room for purgatory or repentance. Against that judgment love would offer no appeal.

"If I had any courage," Raoul said quietly, "I should have left you years ago. Set you free from these hopeless bonds to find another man who could be the husband and father you dreamed you could find in me. If I'd had the courage — to watch you happy at last in his arms — blossoming under his kiss—"

The monotone broke off on a gasp; resumed its steady verdict.

"But to let you go was more than I could bear. So I clung on, though that clasp dragged you down. Though you were made of a stuff so fine that our marriage fouled it past enduring... but there's a simple solution, after all. So easy for both of us. A slip of the foot, high up on deck... a few minutes' struggle, far from land... and we can both be free of this tainted shell that stains everything it touches." He smiled, eyes lost at last, gone beyond all fear or feeling. "This mask... that was once Raoul de Chagny."

Verdict; judgment; sentence.

For an instant, hysterical laughter threatened to choke her. _I disgust you, don't I... God knows I disgust myself_... and love — love, that could not save them — had brought them now to this...

"How _**dare**_ you?" She flung it at him like a slap in the face: something — anything — to rock him out of that horrible composed resolve. Hysteria spilled over into scalding tears, but she ignored them. "How dare you put me on a pedestal, Monsieur le Vicomte — how dare you set me in the heavens and drag yourself through the gutter, when our child, our very child—"

_Gustave, how can I?_ But better to lose a father... that way... than the other; better to lose Raoul through the wrong she had done him than through an imagined perfection she had never deserved.

"Raoul — Gustave isn't even your son. I've known for years; you must have guessed. To bring another man's child to our marriage — does that mark me out of a stuff too fine to touch? Is that the wife whose own husband's hold can defile her? Is that the plaster saint you've set up to be shattered?"

She went to him at last; crossed the cramped cabin with its heavy panelling and sank down beside him on the high-built bed, throwing an embrace tightly around his shoulders and burying unheeded tears in his shirt-front. The sour sweat of drink stood out on his skin, mingling with stale linen and the faint tobacco-reek of the card-room, but she tightened her grip, feeling the warm solidity of bone and muscle within her arms, the lifting rhythm of his breath, the heartbeat lurching beneath her cheek — warm, real, living — hers — _oh Raoul, how could you ever think to leave me all alone?_

She shifted her grip momentarily as if to shake him and raised her face to his, lifting one hand to brush back the thick disarray of fair hair from his brow. With the other hand she possessed herself of his fingers, curling her own tightly round an unresponsive grasp. His gaze still looked blank; but it was the more familiar glazed look of mingled alcohol and strain.

"Gustave... I don't believe it." Instinctive denial, with a shake of the head; Raoul winced and freed his hands, raising them to his temples. "The boy... it's not true..."

He read the answer in her eyes and dropped his head back into his hands with a groan. "So that's why... I knew — I _**knew**_ there was something wrong. The child — I could never..."

She could see him struggling with the implications, through the fogging haze that was finally, mercifully, starting to overcome him, the fuddled mind clinging on to the justification as if to ward off the rest. If only he could remember it that way when he woke — forgive himself at last for the son he'd never truly been able to love, and, freed of that mantle of unnatural parenthood, learn to know the little boy who looked up to him with such longing as all the father he'd ever known.

If only he could forgive her for betraying him out of an heir...

"I suppose—" Raoul's mind had clearly reached that same point in its series of glacial jerks— "there's no need to ask... who?"

She'd told herself over the years she would not be ashamed. Told herself never to regret what she had done... Raoul had been there; he alone, perhaps, in the world of his birth, could understand. But the hot blood dyed her face and she found herself looking away, unable to answer; and when she had braced herself to the response, turning, it was to a husband whose eyes had abruptly drifted shut. Christine was just in time to get an arm around him as he swayed and guide him back to a safely prone position collapsed upon the bed.

She managed to get him into stocking-feet and ease him into a more comfortable sprawl before the hazy gaze flickered open again in search of her own. The answer must have been clear to read in her ebbing colour. The corners of his mouth twitched slightly, into what might have been a rueful smile.

"No need... to ask..." the Vicomte de Chagny murmured, heavy lids closing once more. But one hand stirred for the first time within hers, into a tentative clasp.

For a moment she thought he might stir again; but it was not until long after it had become plain that her husband was truly and deeply asleep that she finally slipped her fingers free from his. With the bitter lines of their waking hours wiped free, he seemed suddenly very young. Christine stooped briefly and brushed a kiss across his forehead, as she had done for Gustave. Then she rang the bell for the steward.

~o~

It was not until she had to face Célestine's accusatory gaze, fifteen minutes later, that she remembered she had left her wrapper in Raoul's cabin along with her son's shirts. And by that time it was all she could manage to undress herself in turn and sink into bed.


	3. Until I Hear You Sing

_...in which Christine loses her hat, and Raoul loses his head..._

**Chapter 3. 'Til I Hear You Sing**

There was a salt tang on the sea breeze, high on the _Persephone_'s decks, and the early morning sun made the long billows in her wake almost too bright to bear. Even the white paint of her promenade deck glistened brilliantly in the last of the overnight damp, and Christine de Chagny, shading her eyes, found herself very glad of the gauzy scarf she had knotted to hold her hat against the breeze. Far below, the waves surged against the sides with a steady hiss as the great ship cleaved through them, steady as a rock. Above her the four wide funnels streamed their constant plume, torn away to windward in shreds of smoke where it began to fade. Here in mid-ocean, there were no gulls, no long mournful horns of tugs or dockside whistles. She might have been alone in a world reborn clear and bright and new, save for the sound of the wind above. Somewhere distant, bells rang, orders were given and watches kept; all the steady, diligent work of the ship went on. But sunlight streamed through the wide windows of the promenade and beyond across the open deck, and Christine leaned both hands upon the rail and turned her face up to the vast blue wash of sky as if she were the only one to witness it in a thousand years.

"Excuse me, madame—"

Christine jumped, as if she had not anticipated the meeting. Her heart was inexplicably racing in her throat. She swung round and met Raoul's eyes with shared constraint.

"I believe you left this behind." Her husband held out the silky bundle of her evening wrapper with irony, as if it had in truth been an illicit liaison that had taken place between them.

Seeking refuge in the same formality, she took it from him with a murmur of thanks, and as if by mutual agreement they fell into step, beginning to stroll forward together beyond the promenade. An observer might have thought it a chance meeting between casual acquaintances.

Christine stole a sidelong glance at his profile, caught him doing the same, and looked away hastily, flushing like a convent schoolgirl. Despite the evident care with which he'd dressed, he seemed pale and somewhat bedraggled, and in anyone else she might have suspected an attack of _mal-de-mer_; but in Raoul, who had always been an excellent sailor, it was much more likely to be a case of the self-inflicted misery of the morning after the night before. Her heart sank, remembering other unwelcome occasions.

But the involuntary wince with which he finally halted, a moment later, was outweighed by the look of absurd indignation that had prompted it. For a moment they were children again. "Did you _**tell**_ that steward to throw water over me?"

She'd imagined all kinds of strained awkwardness in their meeting, after last night; but never this.

"Oh darling—" She'd tipped the man heavily to ensure that Monsieur de Chagny would be out on deck to meet her; evidently extreme measures had been required. And Raoul _**was**_ distinctly damp... She couldn't help laughing. "Oh darling — come here—"

All formality forgotten — he looked so very boyish and outraged — she reached up without a second thought to pull his head down towards her, rough-towelling the wet tendrils of hair with the ends of her scarf, as she had done when they were young. "Here — let me..."

There was a long bench in the sunlight along the side-decks. She drew him down onto it beside her; gathered the tousled head into her lap. After a moment Raoul yielded against her with a sigh, stretching out along the seat and closing his eyes. "Christine..."

"Hush..." She stroked fingers through his hair like tiny caresses, easing out tangles, brushing the crisp waves aside. One hand cradled briefly along his cheek, and she felt a long breath leave him as he settled closer. "Oh hush..."

She remembered the Jardin des Tuileries again; not as Raoul had recalled it, but with the sweetness of laughter, Paris beneath the trees. And if there were autograph-hunters aboard the _Persephone_, they had yet to find her out...

She leaned forward. Raoul opened his eyes.

"There were... a lot of foolish things said last night." Stilted words. "I think... I must have been very drunk."

_Don't think of it now — darling, it doesn't matter —_ all their old rituals of comfort and remorse. But it did matter...

"Not more so than usual," Christine told him instead with painful honesty, and felt him wince and accept the hit. "Only this time... most of what was said was true."

Raoul rolled over abruptly and sat up, groaning.

"I'd hoped—" He was looking increasingly ill, remembering back, and every habit — every instinct — urged her to placate and reassure him before it could go too far. But what had been said could not be unsaid: and too much of it needed to be faced.

"Darling—"

"I don't see how much longer we can go on," Raoul said quietly, without bitterness or drama, and this time she did shake him, flaring up.

"Never — Raoul de Chagny, _**never**_ frighten me again the way you did last night! Never, do you hear me? We'll manage somehow — pay back the debt — another child — a desert island, a hot air balloon — I'll give up music—"

Between sobbing breaths she scarcely knew any longer what she was saying, and it was Raoul who stilled her beating hands between his own, frowning. "Hush... no more foolishness, Little Lotte... you were born for music; born to soar high..."

One hand tilted her face gently upward and Christine closed her eyes, waiting. But he stilled abruptly, as if taken aback. She felt him take a breath, then hesitate.

She reopened her eyes to find him gazing down at her gravely, a little uncertain frown between his brows. "Born for music... Christine, sing for me."

For a moment, frozen in her turn, she wasn't even sure she'd understood him. But the words made no other sense when she ran through them again.

"Sing — here — now?" She pulled free and sat upright. "But you—"

_Last time I sang in public, Raoul, you arrived ten minutes before the interval. And you made sure to be drunk before you came._ She almost said it; but the flinch in his eyes was enough.

"I'm not proud of much that I said last night," Raoul said steadily. "But you are still the most beautiful thing I ever heard... The press-men, the impresarios, the managers, attention-seekers, gossip and limelight — well, I've been an arrogant fool in more ways than that. But you've sung for them all: sung for audiences, dear, sung for Gustave in his bath..."

A moment's silence; the sea-breeze plucked at her hat and threatened to send her forgotten wrapper billowing down the deck. Raoul caught it in reflex, folding it over and over between his hands. He thrust it into his pocket, finally; looked up.

"Will you sing... for me?" His voice shook a little, and Christine bit her lip.

"Darling — I can't, not just like that. I've no accompanist, I'm not warmed up..."

"There speaks La Diva." And it was a _**very**_ long time since she'd heard that teasing note creep into her husband's voice... the whole thing was ridiculous, Christine knew, but she also knew she was going to do it.

"You do your breathing exercises every morning," Raoul was continuing, "as I should very well know—" And that was a definite glint in his eye.

What was sauce for the goose was sauce for the gander. "And your head?" Christine enquired sweetly.

"My — what?"

He had the grace to look slightly shamefaced as the memory of a hundred ill-tempered mornings dawned. A flush. "I'll take the risk..."

Their eyes met, his with an unexpected note of appeal: it meant more to him than she'd realised. "Christine — will you?"

A deep breath. She stood up. "I'll try."

Her head was a whirl, selecting arias, encores — the rhymes and lullabies she'd sung to Gustave; no, a little too close to the bone — what had she rehearsed, this last year? For a moment, in panic, she felt her mind go entirely blank, as if she were once again that stage-struck ingenue waiting in the wings for her first entrance.

She crossed the deck to the rail and stood gazing out and gripping on with both hands, forcing herself to breathe. Throat open, relaxed... a column of air from the deep muscles... now temper it, shape it... don't clutch...

A great circle of sea spread all around them, deep wrinkles of steel-blue beneath the bright haze of the sky. In the distance, rising on the horizon, there was a single thread of smoke: another ship, too far to see. Beneath her the rhythm of the engines, the long imperceptible swing of the sea. Waiting... And the words slid smoothly into her mind with the memory of the applause: the encore she'd sung last spring, from the number that La Vespina had made so famous.

The notes were ragged at first. She let the wind take them, gathering the power of her voice to cover the long phrases — casting the high notes down, down towards the waves—

"_Un bel dí—"_

She was used to the resonance of the rehearsal room — the vast anticipatory hush of the stage, ready to receive and give back every sound. Unconsciously she'd shrunk from the image of her voice serenading the whole ship, streaming back like the smoke from the funnels above; but the open air took it and swallowed it. The two of them might as well have been alone. She turned at last, hands clasped at her breast, and let the music pour out down the wind to her audience of one — to Raoul, for Raoul — as the sound of the orchestra swelled in her mind.

"_Un bel dí vedremo  
levarsi un fil di fumo  
sul l'estremo confin del mare—"_

It was an approximation. It couldn't help but be an approximation, and she knew well enough the dismissal she would have got from the jackals of the Press that Raoul hated so: unprepared, under-rehearsed, she would have deserved it all. But she put everything she could into it — the utter, childlike hope against hope of the little geisha — and knew from his face that she had chosen right: the face of the boy in the opera-box, with the single red rose.

She sang the last notes directly to him, borne away on the rush of the music, and saw her 'audience' break into a cascade of applause. Christine swept down into a curtsey of acknowledgement, catching the mimed bouquet. Then she ran for her husband's outstretched arms, and found herself swept up and whirled around, laughing.

"_Brava — brava — bravissima!"_

Raoul set her down and kissed her hand with a mock-Italian flourish. But beneath the laughter she could see that the yearning in the song had moved them both. "That was glorious—" as she shook her head and tried to demur — "no, truly. What was it?"

Little wisps of hair were blowing loose around her face. Christine stepped back a little to busy herself with tucking them in, feeling the intensity of performance begin to ebb and leave her, as always, a little shaky.

"_Un bel dí_... I learned it as an encore piece for Madame de Vangçon's salon, when every soprano in Paris was singing it after Vespina's stage success..."

Until that moment she had been half-abstracted; now, suddenly, her throat thickened with realisation. What could have _**possessed**_ her... to pick that lyric? But she had betrayed herself already: first scarlet, then white...

"_Un bel dí_... It means _one fine day_," Christine de Chagny said, very low. "_One fine day... my husband will return to me_... but I—"

Raoul's exclamation was a savage one, made at his own expense. He caught her just in time, without ceremony, as her head began to swim.

Of the next few moments, drained at last, she was never quite certain. But it was Raoul who had somehow eased her back onto the bench and gathered her against him, murmuring; who had untied scarf and hat with clumsy care and pulled her close, cradling her head into its old home in the hollow of his throat. His mouth brushed against her hair with little, meaningless words, and his arms tightened around her.

"Christine, Christine—" And a stream of little endearments from above, signifying nothing and yet everything: days of her girlhood, when his arms about her had sought only to shield her from the world... She freed herself enough to slip a small hand around his waist in response, and felt his hold slacken and then tighten around her in answer to the embrace.

So long — it had been too long—

She turned her face up to his this time almost greedily, and felt his mouth find hers at last without reserve or hesitation, in an eagerness that left them both gasping. She had forgotten — and he... did her own face wear that dazed look? She thought, in a brief lucid moment, that it did... and then she had an arm up around his neck and was pulling him closer, closer, clinging so tight against him she could scarcely breathe, scarcely take a moment from being kissed again, and again and again—

She lay back at last in his arms to catch her breath, aware of his eyes — the flush in his cheeks — the almost incredulous curve of the smile that answered her — and his heart beating somewhere within her breast, or maybe hers within his in perfect duet: she could not tell the racing pulse from her own. Another kiss, as the twinned beats slowed; she read the intention in his face and leaned up to meet it, letting his mouth take hers more gently now as driving need ebbed to exploration and remembered delight... and built again until the blood was drumming in her ears with the urgency of it, hands becoming shameless, and she had to pull away for very decency's sake.

Her hair was not so much down in wisps now as in billows, half the pins gone; buttons were tangled, and her mouth swollen with embraces — altogether a very abandoned picture, she told herself severely and without the slightest regret. And her hat—

"Overboard, I think," Raoul noted with an equal lack of repentance. "Ridiculous wisp that it was—"

"It was very chic." Christine jumped to her feet to look hopefully down the deck; but there was no sign of the unfortunate creation. "And decidedly expensive..." She did feel a pang of guilt over that; her milliner was owed enough money as it was.

"It got in the way," her husband observed with undeniable truth, displaying every indication of demonstrating the accuracy of the accusation once again. But she held him off.

"Raoul, no — we need to think. I need—"

"You need so much that I haven't given you, I know." The years between, momentarily forgotten, had dropped back over him like a mantle, all their reckless flags dying. It hurt even to witness it; but the two of them were no longer the naïve children they'd been, and love alone was not enough. "I've asked so much, dear, and returned so little: and it's you who have paid the price for all the hopes we once had and all the promises I made you. I would have given you the world — and when I fell short of that, I gave you nothing at all..."

"We both—"

"I've been a fool, and I know it, and an arrogant fool, and we both know it; and the worst fool of all to take it out on you. But I swear—" A helpless gesture. "What vow can I ever make you that hasn't been taken and broken already by a thousand drunken bankrupts? But I swear, Christine, that I want it as much as you do — I want our marriage back; I want to give you the husband you've lost, the man for your sake I thought I could be. Just ask, and I swear—"

_Love me_: that was all she'd asked, once. _Tell me you need me: let me go with you_... But they had never stopped loving each other; and in the end that had only made the hurt worse.

"Truly, Raoul? Do you mean it?"

So much drunken penitence over the years, easy maudlin promises that vanished before the sun went down, sooner than face the truth... She'd tried so hard not to make that same mistake again. This was different. Everything told her it was different. But how dared she trust anything she wanted so desperately to believe?

"For both our sakes," Raoul said quietly. "And... the child."

Gustave. Her stomach turned over.

Did he... remember? One glance told her that he had.

"Maybe there are some pieces of news best heard in one's cups." A twist of his mouth. "I should be... outraged, I suppose. Should be asking when, and where — though I can well enough guess — no, don't tell me. That's... an honesty I think we can do without."

The words seemed to echo between them; his face softened and he came to her. "Christine, don't cry..."

Gentle silk against her eyes, from his coat pocket. The roughness of his lapel on her cheek.

"All I can feel... is that it explains so much. So much about the boy — about myself—" A sound that was almost a laugh. "Before he was born, I promised myself I would be the father I'd never had: I thought I would be so proud — and then I felt... nothing..."

This time there was a trace of real, bitter humour. "And now _**his**_ son as the heir to Chagny — what an irony, in the end. What a cosmic joke on us both — on us all three..."

And it was only after a moment, with a jolt that she had thought long since dead, that Christine understood that the third in his mind had not been Gustave.

"Raoul, Gustave doesn't know. He's followed you everywhere since he could walk — he'd have worshipped you if—" _If you had ever let him._ She swallowed that, past the lump in her throat. "He's so like you, sometimes, that it hurts... he might so easily be yours, and he would be if only he could. He's never harmed anyone: he isn't his—"

But if Raoul de Chagny, orphaned into a house full of women, had known little enough of fatherhood, how could she ever use the word of... that other? Creature of darkness — and of loneliness...

She'd thought she was free of the memories. She'd thought them escaped at last. And now Raoul, too, must carry that burden again; it was not fair.

"He's only a little boy. And — he loves you."

"I know." Raoul bent to kiss her, gently. "I know. And so, for both our sakes... and for his... we'll try."

It was more than she'd dared to hope for; more than her superstition told her she deserved. She leaned back against her husband's warmth and stood quietly within his embrace, allowing herself at last to dream.


	4. One Thing More

_...in which Raoul proposes a sacrifice, but creates a stir..._

**Chapter 4. One Thing More**

The sun was perceptibly higher now. Within the cabins behind them on the promenade deck valets and maids would be stirring, toilettes would be being made and morning tea sipped, and out here she and Raoul could not be certain much longer of being alone. Any minute now, that red-faced Englishman might even appear for his 'morning constitutional'...

Raoul had tensed, his arms tightening around her. "Christine—"

"Mmm?" Catching, belatedly, the strain in his tone, she turned to look up at him. "Dear, what is it?"

"Christine, I have no right to ask this — but if you love me—"

"—You know I do."

"Then..." But he hesitated.

"Anything, darling." Christine laughed, guessing at what it might be; blushing a little.

"I have no right to ask, but... Christine, break this contract."

"Do _**what**_?" She twisted out of his hold altogether, staring. She wasn't even sure she understood.

"For my sake... break this American contract. Don't go to New York. Don't sing this concert. Don't — sell yourself to save me."

"But—" Far astern, the screws churned white water. And every revolution, every stroke of the pistons carried them closer to New York. "I can't. You know I can't. A contract—"

She'd signed. Set her reputation on the line; signed away her voice and her art for that stupendous, crippling sum of money.

"We both know you've had to break contracts on my behalf before." He could not quite keep the bitterness from his voice. "Last year, in Vienna — that 'accident'—"

He'd been in no state to ride home that night, let alone take on that wager in the Prater. She'd wondered, when they'd brought him back to the hotel — then and afterwards — if he'd had it at the back of his mind to break his neck and be done with it.

As it was, he'd been unconscious for the night and half the day, and too sick and giddy to be moved for the best part of a week: and there had been no question of her performing on that day or any other. It was only two days later that she'd learned how it had happened, from a deputation of young Uhlans who had paid a visit to tender their most profound sympathies to the wife of the Herr Vicomte and their regrets at not having fully appreciated his situation that night, having themselves been some trifle intoxicated on proposing the race... all most upright and correct, with their flat-crested helmets held stiffly across the breast and their heels at the salute. She had received them in the cramped little hotel parlour — half-distracted the whole while with Raoul in the next room, lying ashen-grey beneath the great bandage across his brow — and had looked up at their anxious, pink young faces, remembering that reckless sweet-tempered boy to whom she'd given her hand, and for his sake tried hard to smile at them and to be kind...

She didn't even want to think about that time in Vienna. There was still that little scar, under his hair — she'd run her fingers over it this morning — but by the grace of God, nothing more. Unless the headaches... No. Christine banished that thought firmly, trying for a lighter tone.

"Raoul, America's different: I've never sung there before, the management don't know me. If I pull out now, at the last minute, I'll go down as just another capricious foreign act — unreliable, flighty..."

"Who cares what America thinks? Let them gossip — let them find some new gimcrack sensation—" His mouth had tightened in distaste: and there went twenty generations of unconscious hauteur in one sublime dismissal, Christine thought ruefully. Twenty generations who'd had the privilege of putting a point of honour above the price of the next meal...

He heard the echo of it himself and flushed a little. "It's not— Listen, there's something _**wrong**_ about this American contract: there has been from the start. It's too much money; you said it yourself — no one pays that sort of price for a single solo performance. It's gaudy and crude: it makes the dollar-billing the star, not the singer, never mind the voice... Christine, it's a circus act — can't you see it? All those dollars aren't bidding for the soloist: they're buying _**Christine Daaé**_. The scandal, the celebrity, the story — the Vicomtesse on a public stage. They're making us an offer we can't refuse... so they can show us off as freaks."

Christine bit her lip, meeting his gaze with her own appalled dismay. It seemed all too likely. Yet she'd known all along, when that unbelievable offer had come through like the answer to a prayer — to all their prayers — that there must be some kind of price to be paid.

"I... have to do this. We have to get through it — somehow. Just the one performance, dear. Just one night... to pay everything back. Then we'll go — leave New York behind. Then we'll start again. But... we have to go through with it first, Raoul. We have to get free. I... need to."

"You don't." The focus of his face was frightening her in its intensity. "You don't have to do this — sell yourself to the unscrupulous to cover _**my**_ debts, my folly—"

And she too wished, oh how she wished she could afford to refuse — but the last few months had been desperate, and then they'd spent everything they had left on this last venture, this one throw of the dice. Turn back now, and nothing would hold the debtors off any longer. Foreclosure, bankruptcy... perhaps prison. And it would not be for one night, and it would not be thousands of miles away. It would be in their home, in Paris, in the full view of everyone they had ever known. And those twenty generations of ancestors would end their line in shame and disgrace.

There was an etiquette for that, among Raoul's kind. It led to a locked door, and a loaded revolver. It wasn't a road on which she ever wanted to see her husband embark.

And there was no way to say it without making it an accusation. "Darling, I have to. We — we need the money."

"You think I don't know exactly how much money we need? You think I haven't sat there, with the figures, night after night—" He bowed his head abruptly over hands that locked and twisted, the knuckles white, as if clinging in their last desperate moments to the bars of the condemned cell. For a moment, she thought she glimpsed an indecision in his face — then he looked up.

"There's another way." He smiled at her, held out a hand. Only the nail-prints in the palm that touched her own told of the effort that gesture had cost him.

He drew her close, enfolding her hands in his. "Christine—" a moment's hesitation — "I mean to sell Chagny."

"You can't!" The shock of repudiation was instinctive; she had sprung back without a thought. "You — you can't sell—"

To her it was a memory of refuge, of happiness; to them both, the old chateau had been a married home; but to Raoul, Vicomte de Chagny, the house and lands meant far more than that, she knew.

It was the legacy and trust of five hundred years. It was the heritage of those generations so lightly worn. "Raoul, it's your family — your _**name**_!"

"Listen." Raoul took her hand again; touched it a moment to his lips, and retained it in his own. "Gustave cares nothing for the running of the estate: he would be as happy — happier — tinkering all day in a workshop or hammering on that endless piano of his. And I... I care too much: too much, these last years, to see my father's tenants beggared annually to pay for my mistakes, to see the land starved of the money it needs to put it into good heart, while every franc is wrung out of the place to service the bankers in Paris... I've seen Chagny dying, slowly — dying on my account. It's like the Opéra of our day... it needs investment. A new owner." A faint tinge of teasing as his fingers tightened on hers. "Maybe... a scrap-metal merchant?"

She choked. "Raoul, how can you—"

"I'm serious. Laurent de Beaupré sold Chamillon to the _nouveaux riches_ this year — an iron-founder and his wife from Lille. If we can find someone to take Chagny at the same sort of price — then get rid of the town-house, it brings in nothing and costs a mint to keep up — invest the proceeds in the Funds at five per cent—"

He was pale, but very calm.

"It will be enough to clear everything we owe, and bring in a little income. A modest competence; enough to live quietly in a small way, and cover school fees... perhaps. For anything else—" he managed a smile, stroking her hand lightly— "for anything else... then it's time to face the truth, Christine: your earnings have been supporting both of us for years in any case."

"The Vicomtesse... buys her own furs?" Christine's return smile was a shaky thing. Those nights spent locked away from her, alone with the drink and his debts — it had been this, then, _**this**_ laceration of his pride that he had been facing.

"The Vicomtesse... pays for her husband's coachman, if he keeps one," Raoul said quietly. "Or the hire of his _fiacre_, if he does not."

This was no spur-of-the-moment whim, then. "You've really thought about it..."

It was a whisper, but he nodded. "It's been coming for a long time. The rents from Chagny were never quite enough, even before — before I began to lose the capital. These days, the title supports the lands, not the lands the title... Well, I brought it down upon myself, that was all. I could see it coming, but it was easier to shut my eyes and keep going — keep waiting for that one big win, the miracle... But Chagny itself was the only thing we had left big enough to cover the debts. So this American contract seemed that miracle come true... the gambler's miracle that could allow me to continue as a coward in the face of what had to be done: when I thought I'd lost you, I shut my eyes to everything else."

He caught her other hand, dropping suddenly to one knee on the deck. It should have looked affected — absurd, in a man ten years married. But the utter unselfconscious urgency of it made the boyish gesture all too real.

"Christine, I _**beg**_ of you — break this contract. You've given up so much for me without a word, sacrificed so much of your happiness... let me do this for you. Please, let me give up this one thing for you to make a new start. Let me protect you from this grotesquerie and take my share of the cost. Let me—"

It was the terrace at Chagny all over again: that bittersweet memory turned to joy, now with another pang. Chagny — how could she?

"Let you tear out your own heart to save me a moment's pain? Darling, that was the bargain I couldn't bear when we were young... The price isn't worth it — I can stand a freak-show—"

"Please." He had pressed her hands against his breast, face turned up to hers with a painful intensity. Behind him, far down the promenade deck, a fluttering parasol and a snatch of voices brought a rush of anticipated crimson to her face; they were no longer alone. Her husband spared not a moment's glance. "Please. I have a — a presentiment over this: something is terribly wrong."

"I — can't." _Please, Raoul, get up: in a moment they will be coming this way._ "I can't. Not just like that. Not overnight. Not something as big as this."

To her relief, he did get up — not with quite the same grace as the boy of twenty, but with the same unthinking movement.

"And it's not mine to ask — I know."

He led her to the rail and paused there a moment before they began to pace slowly onwards together along the deck. Christine put a hand up to her back hair and found it hopelessly dishevelled. And her hat was gone... She tried to push the waves up blindly; exclaimed in annoyance as another pin came loose under her fingers.

"Raoul — could you—?" She turned a little, presenting the nape of her neck, and felt him rather gingerly begin to rescue the remaining pins and attempt to truss the soft mass into submission with their aid; the process felt — and, she suspected, looked — more like some agricultural operation than the skilled attentions of a lady's-maid, but it was secure. And the unspoken intimacy of it served to make amends to that other unspoken acknowledgement between them: that she could not, dared not trust all their futures to a rapprochement a bare few hours old. However much it meant to her; however much she wanted to be sure.

Raoul's impromptu repairs had come to an end. She felt him hesitate a moment, his breath warm against the back of her neck, then brush the tiniest of kisses there. Her heart ached within her. "Raoul—"

But he had turned, and was drawing a twist of something from around his wrist. "Here, this might help..."

A familiar gauzy scrap; she caught a glimpse as he knotted it around her against the wind, and began to laugh. "Mine! How did you—"

"Ah — well, it's harder than you'd think to get out of old habits." Raoul tucked the ends in at her throat and stepped back to admire the overall effect of his handiwork, a certain mischief wakening in his eyes. "I lost track of the hat, but I did manage to save your scarf..."

The temptation was overwhelming. It was pert little Christine Daaé who put out her tongue at her childhood companion, defying him, as ever, to reciprocate; Raoul managed only a moment's dignified reproach. Both of them laughing now, he caught and held her as she came back into his arms.

~o~

A walrus-like puffing behind them, some minutes later, proved to be the English colonel breathing heavily through his moustache. But it was not until the brief disturbance returned in the opposite direction, puffing harder than ever, that Christine de Chagny raised her head sufficiently from her husband's embrace to encounter the Englishman's increasingly choleric glare.

She could feel Raoul's chuckle against her, deep in his throat. "I believe we may be making something of a scandal, dear. You didn't see the expression on Mrs. Vanderbilt's maid..."

"Oh dear—" But it wasn't the probability of gossip in the first-class saloon that she had suddenly recalled, but the existence of a certain small boy, undoubtedly awake by now and endowed with limitless energy. "Gustave... Célestine can never handle him in the mornings — I'm afraid he'll be running riot... I must get back."

"Evidently heredity will out." It was said with a smile as she disentangled herself from him, but Raoul's voice had tightened.

He had _**never**_ got on well with Gustave in the mornings, Christine told herself, flinching. And he had every right to resentment; but... if this was to be the rest of their lives...

"Darling, we have so little left of his childhood. Once he goes away to school—" It had to happen, she knew, but boys grew up so fast. She remembered Raoul coming back to Perros: her summer's playmate grown so stiff and bashful, yet proud. And Gustave... would he have that same shy constraint with his mother's kisses, with fairytales and peasant songs and all the passing embraces of their life together? "Let him be a baby just a little while longer... time enough later to be stern and strict."

She hesitated.

"Raoul... I know you think I spoil him, but all he wants is a little attention. If you don't have to be a father to him—" she bit her lip — "can't you... be the brother he needs so much? He's so often left alone in a gaggle of women, with only his music... He doesn't have to steal me from you all the time — he's old enough now to be good company, at least for a while."

"The prospect of Gustave before breakfast makes my head hurt." Raoul's tone was rather dry. "And speaking of breakfast—"

He winced a little, perhaps remembering last night. "Actually, possibly not breakfast..."

Glancing around, Christine was afraid they might well have missed breakfast in any case. After the morning's turmoil, she wasn't sure she cared.

"But speaking of Gustave—" She ignored her husband's resigned look. "Dear, I'm sure those clean shirts of his must be packed in with yours, and I really can't face Célestine again without them."

"Fine." Raoul threw up his hands and turned to leave. "I'll go and turn out my cabin... I can't imagine what you ever saw in that Célestine woman in the first place."

_She was all we could afford, and you know it._ Christine sighed. Well, they would have to do without her altogether once they reached New York. Four more days...

Four days — to whatever America held lying in wait. For a moment she felt the cold touch of Raoul's presentiment. There _**was**_ something wrong about the whole affair — the anonymous backer, the dazzling... bribe, it could be called nothing else — and if the two of them had not been so numbed in their separate miseries they must surely have seen it. But what difference could that have made? They'd had no choice.

But now there was a choice. Raoul had given her a choice: offered her a way out. Offered her a future, and offered her back the past... And would she truly plunge into penury at his side, if it would set his heart at ease? Of course she would: she knew it without a doubt. She would have tramped the lanes of Brittany again and slept on straw to bring him back, if he had only asked. She would have paid costs she reckoned far less lightly than that, these last few years, to lay the demons that were driving them apart.

And he had not made a condition of it — had not begged her to appease his pride in return for a promise. _What vow can I ever make you?—_ Yet he had made it, had bound himself... and only then made the appeal. Because he was afraid for them both. For her.

She wanted so much to give him her trust; to lay down the mantle of the anxious, conciliating wife and share their lives together as before. Four days, before she must be certain...

She watched her husband begin to thread his way back down an increasingly crowded deck, pausing to exchange a nod here and there as a few heads turned. There went young von Enck, who'd paid her all those laborious compliments — dear God, was it only last night? — at the captain's table: she wondered if he'd actually recognised the Vicomte.

Even from behind — even with his hackles still prickled in annoyance — she could see the difference now in the way he carried himself, in every movement. So much that she had lost for so long. If only— _Please, Raoul, don't... drink any more..._

For a frozen moment, as he halted and swung round, Christine thought she'd let that plea slip out into earshot, appalled. Hasty memory told her she had not; but Raoul was coming back.

"Excuse me, madame—" he made a beautiful formal bow to her in front of a passing gaggle of American matrons, every one of whom was clearly agog — "but I believe you inadvertently left in my care... _**this**_..." And in full view of the rest of the deck, he proceeded for the second time that morning to draw from his pocket a silky intimate bundle and present it, doing his utmost to maintain a straight face, to his wife.

"Raoul, you—" Scarlet to the ears, Christine struggled against the odds to school her own features into a respectable blank, caught his eye and collapsed into a fit of entirely undignified giggles.

And Mrs. Mannheimer, Mrs. Elwood T. Burton and Mrs. Van Heusen were enabled to report to the rest of their circle with the utmost enjoyment, later that morning, how the attractive young Vicomtesse de Chagny had not only slapped her husband's face in public but had proceeded to indulge in the most indiscreet of embraces as an immediate sequel; conduct, as the ladies all agreed, which entirely confirmed everything one had always heard about the French... and which, as Mamie Burton confided privately to her friend Clementine Van Heusen, had inspired in the onlookers a distinctly pleasurable envy.


	5. Friend and Father

_...in which Gustave gets a bath..._

**Chapter 5. Friend and Father**

It was really quite unseasonably hot. Christine fanned herself surreptitiously with the folded sheet of the ship's daily _Gazette_ (a Toureg uprising in Mauretania; arrival of Crown Prince Wilhelm in Bremen; an unclaimed pearl bracelet to be found at the purser's office) and exchanged a smile with Mrs Cunningham, the little Englishwoman who was likewise leaning over the rail of the aft promenade beside her. Below them on the liner's stern decks, a boisterous game of quoits was going on, with much laughter among the younger contestants as an occasional larger swell sent a throw flying off-target; the _Persephone_ had become a little more lively over the last few days, heaving through the long mid-Atlantic rollers, and Christine had been admiring the dexterity with which the attendants brought round trays of afternoon tea, handling china and silverware with as much ease as if the deck planking had not been slanting steadily from side to side beneath them.

Down below, young Selina Cunningham was taking her throw amid much solicitous advice from not one but two jostling youths a couple of years older; she made the cast with a schoolgirl squeak of triumph and turned to wave up at her mother, who was watching her with a smile. Still very much a nursery-party, Christine deduced with amusement, as another squeal announced the arrival of her own offspring along the upper deck at high speed.

She held out her arms, laughing, to catch Gustave as he flung himself around the corner towards her, and swept him round and up against the rail in a swirl of skirts, hugging the compact small body tight against her. Gustave grinned back, cheeks flushed and pink beneath the flying fair hair, and used the fall of one sleeve to wipe his forehead before she could prevent him. "Sorry, Mother, I can't stop — it's a chase—"

And he was off again like lightning, vanishing back up the far side of the ship with the inexhaustible energy of the very young.

Raoul, appearing light-footed in pursuit an instant later, was every bit as flushed in the face as her son, his hair damp and clinging; but he returned her an equally cheerful grin, mopping perspiration from his eyes with a pocket-handkerchief. "No tea, thanks—" as she held out an unused cup — "I've got a child eagerly waiting to be caught up with—"

"Do try to make sure he doesn't fall in," Christine said without thinking — in some part of every mother's heart, it seemed, her son was still a helpless infant — and received a look of oblivious masculine unconcern in return.

"As if any of us would dare, after one scolding from old Mathilde. Why, the time I fell in the lake..."

But the nostalgic tone trailed off, and after a moment he sighed, unexpectedly. "I wish she could be here now — Mathilde."

It was not the sun and the sea that she thought he had in mind.

"So do I." She slipped her hand briefly into his. "So do I. We owe her so much."

A son, a husband... It was Mathilde's calm sense and refusal to pass judgement that had held Raoul together in those last few months, when her own attempts to reach him had only lacerated them both; and it was the shared de Chagny nursery experience — twenty years apart — that had formed the first tentative bridge between her husband and the stranger's child whom as his own son he'd always resented.

But Raoul had set himself, a little awkwardly, to make overtures: Gustave, blossoming in the unaccustomed attention like sun after rain, had launched into enthusiastic anecdote. Twenty minutes later she had come back to find her son with one hand tucked confidingly into Raoul's own, listening enthralled to a hesitant account of evading Mathilde's vigilance in order to slip into the stables at night. And twenty minutes after that, Gustave had evidently succeeded in insinuating himself into the crook of Raoul's arm, a position which — judging by the blissful satisfaction of his expression — he had long been envious to attain: the two fair heads were bent close together over the workings of his grandfather's prized repeater, which had been one of the young Vicomte's most hallowed boyhood possessions. Christine still remembered the awed air with which the small Raoul had first displayed to her the intricate mechanisms of the watch, that summer at Perros; she had barely dared do more than stroke the burnished case with one finger. She could only imagine the joy with which her mechanically-minded son must have discovered the potential of such an object.

She had set an arm around the shoulders of both, her heart too full for words, and laid her cheek against Raoul's as Gustave wriggled free.

"Look, Mother, look! You touch this spring, and..."

She had laughed and kissed him.

Yes, Mathilde would have loved to see her two former nurselings ensconced together in the corner of the saloon this morning over an article on ballooning that Raoul had found... and Raoul's old nurse had guessed, perhaps, at what Christine had not: that it was not only Gustave who had stood in want of boyish activity.

Raoul was flushed, out of breath, and slightly sunburnt. But the dark shadows under his eyes were gone, and he was sweating freely with a grin, a clean male scent that was heightened a little in her senses, not the old liquor-fouled reek... He was showing every sign of dashing off again in pursuit. Christine caught at his sleeve. "Was this chase-game your idea or his, darling?"

"Mine — for my sins." The rueful tone was at his own expense. "But this ship's incredible — you wouldn't believe the places on board that we've been through—"

"I would." She reached up to silence him with a kiss. "Which is why I'd much rather you were with him..."

"If he's gone where I think he has, there's a short-cut through second class." Raoul returned an affectionate but somewhat perfunctory embrace, his mind clearly already racing elsewhere, and she laughed.

"Well, once you've caught up with him you might suggest he comes down here and tries a game of quoits; I think the two of you have had quite enough running around for one day and I happen to know little Selina Cunningham is dying to try out her French." She smiled over at Mrs Cunningham, who responded with uncomprehending English politeness, and a slightly flustered look as the Vicomtesse's husband inclined a graceful if dishevelled bow in her direction.

And then with a parting wave of the hand he was gone. Christine leaned over the rail again with half-closed eyes, letting the sway of the ship take her weight. Somewhere at the edge of her attention she could hear the laughter of the quoits-players below, and the running surge of the sea; but she was turning a certainty over and over in her mind, cherishing the warmth of the decision.

The saloon steward would be able to help her...

* * *

Christine gave a smile and a word of thanks to the gangly youth who brought her the form, dipping her pen absently as she studied the heavy black print. The Wireless Telegraphy office was high in the ship and somewhat cramped, and the nib she was using was not a good one; but they'd found her a little table down the corridor and the clerk had been helpfulness personified. She dipped the pen again and wrote the New York address, taking care with the sputtering ink. The clerk coughed.

"And the address for the reply, Madame: DECHAGNY PERSEPHONE—"

"There won't be a reply," Christine said quietly, copying obedient codes at his dictation. She tapped the end of the pen against her chin briefly, marshalling words: wrote again without pause. _REGRET UNABLE TO FULFIL CONTRACT..._

Two lines of text. She read it over again, retaining the telegram a moment longer in her hand as he tried to take it from her.

Goodbye, America. Goodbye to our last chance... to go back as before? No. And Raoul's presentiment was still cold at the back of her neck.

She let the paper slip from her fingers, and paid over the fee. "And that will go tonight? Here, now?" From a ship in the middle of the ocean... it was still hard to believe.

"As soon as there is time, Madame." Her form was added to a stack of others; one more anonymous sheet of paper.

So the die was cast. It was done. She had a ridiculous urge to stay for as long as it took, to hear the codes tapped out and to make certain. But it was absurd. Even if it were permitted, it would prove nothing; and there were men here with work to do.

Besides, after all the rushing about of the day, she needed to make sure Gustave had his bath... a task which she strongly suspected was beyond Célestine.

Even so, she was not prepared for the volume of protest which hit her as she opened the door into their stateroom. She'd expected furious objections from Gustave, who disliked the entire process; she had been prepared to hear fishwife scolding from Célestine, who had neither toleration nor understanding of boys who would not do as they were told. But the sheer level of fury to which their voices were jointly contributing as she entered the inner cabin — Gustave's portion quashed into violently splashing bubbles as Célestine propelled his head downwards between his knees while ladling water down his back — was beyond anything Christine considered reasonable.

"Gustave! Célestine — what on earth is the meaning of this?"

A moment's lull: then a fresh outburst as both parties broke into violent grievance. Célestine was the louder. Her usual prim appearance was marred by great soaked splashes, her collar pulled askew, long strands of hair clawed free from their confinement, and she brandished a red mark on her wrist with outraged disbelief.

"Little viper!" She was almost incoherent in her fury. "Like a child from the gutter — to insult me, to scratch like some hellspawn demon—"

Christine had gone very pale. "Madame, that is quite enough! If you cannot handle a ten-year-old child—"

"Some child." Célestine set her hands on her hips in an all-too-familiar gesture. "If the son of a Vicomte—"

"_Enough_." The Vicomtesse's voice was icy in its restraint. "Monsieur Gustave will answer to me — and you will leave now, please. At once."

Rigid and shaking, she watched the woman march out, back still stiff with offence.

That temper of Gustave's — those flashes of black consuming temper, that counted no cost and acknowledged no limit, the son of his father... Christine took hold of herself. It was childish naughtiness, that was all. Really, that woman had the knack of hitting upon precisely the wrong thing to say.

She sighed as an exclamation from outside and a fresh torrent of complaint indicated an interruption in Célestine's exit. Raoul's voice could be heard in annoyance, and the next moment he had thrust through into the cabin behind her.

"Is that female completely out of her mind? Anyone would think... And the noise — what the—?" That last was bitten off short in deference to Gustave's tender years; but in his shirtsleeves, with a damp towel slung round his neck in lieu of a collar and another still drying face and hands, he was clearly straight out of his own bath in answer to the uproar, and far from pleased.

"Well, Gustave?" She was very rarely angry with him, but she was now.

"I'm much too old to be washed by _**her**_." Dripping and bedraggled, the child had flinched at her tone, but he was still huddled against perceived injustice. The high back of the bathtub was between them, and she could see nothing of him but one defensively curled shoulder and the peaked wet face. "She isn't even a proper nursemaid. She only comes with us because we've got no money, she said so. And I don't want her looking at me in the bath, I hate her. She's got hard hands, and she pinches. And she stares."

Checking to see if the son of a Vicomte was made the same as other boys, no doubt. Christine sighed. It was hard on him to be subject to a Célestine, at ten years old.

"Very well... but I need you to get on and bath yourself, please, darling, without a fuss. If you're old enough to be trusted to wash properly, then you're old enough to do it without being told. All over, Gustave." She found the soap where Célestine had dropped it, and passed it to her son along with the flannel. "And I need you to apologise to Célestine."

Tentative washing noises had begun, but stopped abruptly. "But Mother—"

"You should be ashamed, a boy of your age, to scream and scratch like a baby in a fit of temper. And Célestine was only doing as I had told her. She had no choice, Gustave, and you make her life more difficult."

"She makes my life difficult." But it was said under his breath. One foot waved over the edge of the tub with energetic soaping, shortly followed by the other, and water splashed. "I'm sorry, Mother. I didn't mean to hurt her. But she grabbed me so hard — and she wouldn't listen—"

"I have yet to know Madame Célestine to listen to anyone," Raoul observed rather drily from behind her. He put down the towel with which he had been attempting to finish drying himself, and crossed the cabin to lay a hand on Gustave's wet shoulder, drawing a rather apprehensive upward glance. He met the boy's gaze, and held it. "Now, personally, I have no time for Célestine Bribot. But a true de Chagny doesn't take out his temper on servants or underlings. He owes that to himself — and to his family."

"Even if he has no money?"

"Most especially when he has no money... or how else could anyone know the quality of his birth?"

Gustave digested that for a moment, resting his chin on his knees in front of him. He looked up again. "But people do, sometimes, don't they? Get angry?"

"Yes," Raoul said quietly. He dropped to one knee, bringing their eyes level. "And they're truly sorry for it afterwards... That's a smudge of oil on your cheek, I think. Shall I try to get it off?"

Gustave passed over the flannel without protest and submitted to a vigorous scrubbing process. "Father..." It was hesitant. "Shall I... be a true de Chagny?"

A moment's silence. Christine's heart ached for them both.

"You are." Raoul de Chagny reached for the towel and slipped it about the boy's dripping body as he rose, drawing him close. His eyes met hers above the head of their son, and she found her vision unaccountably blurred. "You are."

~o~

Christine turned aside; made herself very busy all of a sudden, searching amid Gustave's tumbled possessions, until she could trust her voice.

"Here's your nightshirt, darling." She held it out for the boy to dive into, his arms flailing, and dropped a kiss on his forehead when he was done. "Now get into bed, and I'll sing for you."

She leaned over him to pull up the blankets as he wriggled down, then seated herself in her usual place on the end of the bed. Raoul had come quietly to stand behind her, and she felt him slip an arm about her shoulders. Christine sank back against him, settling into the remembered security of that hold.


	6. Back Here Beside You

_...in which all manner of thing shall be well._

**Chapter 6. Back Here Beside You**

Gustave lay curled with one hand beneath his cheek, looking up at them gravely. "Is Father going to sing as well?"

Caught unawares, Christine found herself blushing a little, laughing. He was a bright child, and he'd been watching them together, these past few days; he had to have been drawing conclusions.

Raoul had laughed as well. "I don't think that would send you to sleep, Gustave — I'm not quite in your mother's league."

"But didn't you ever sing — when you were little?"

"Of course he did. And he used to play tunes with my Papa." Christine looked up at her husband, catching his hand between both of hers. "Raoul, why don't we try? No, listen... do you remember _Au Petit Estaminet_? We sang it for your aunt, once, that time she came to see Papa; we used to do it as a round..."

She hummed the line softly, pressing his hand.

_Au petit estaminet  
là où on se trouve—_

And on the second repeat, as she gave the sign, his voice came in to join her, awkward and oddly husky in her ears after memory's childhood treble. He coughed and broke off ruefully, clearing his throat. "I can't—"

"You can." Christine was adamant. She bent her head to touch her lips to the hand she held, in reassurance. "Come on — together: _au petit estaminet_..."

Her father's eyes had been bright in the twilight, his fiddle set aside on his knee for the moment as the children sang: three times round, call and repeat, and then his deep voice would come in under theirs in the long nonsense phrases, _tra la la te da tra la te ée..._ and round and round the little song would wind, she and Raoul intent upon Papa's dancing eyes, waiting for the moment when he would try to catch them out and... _**Stop**__!_ But they had always been too quick: and the three voices would break off in the same instant, laughing, and Papa would sweep them both into a great hug—

She felt Raoul's arm tighten around her in the same memory, and heard him begin again, voice hoarse from disuse: a beat later she came in behind him in unison, their voices blending in the simple melody as Gustave's face lit up in eagerness. And if she knew her son... She glanced up at Raoul for a moment, warning him, and he nodded, falling briefly silent before launching gallantly on cue into the second part.

The duet faltered under the challenge; wavered, as she dropped hastily down to an undervoice, and slowly regained confidence as Raoul's contribution steadied into the remembered pattern. Call and response... his part two phrases behind hers. Beyond the delight in Gustave's wide eyes she could see understanding unwinding, saw the child sit up on an inward breath as the music chased itself...

Christine gave smiling assent to that eager look; saw him listen an instant longer, intently. And then Gustave's clear treble came in, pitch-perfect, on the third part — two phrases behind Raoul's — and the round was once again complete.

Two phrases ahead, two phrases behind: soprano and treble twined around each other with the man's deeper voice steady below. _Oh Papa_... Raoul's hand, too, had trembled a little in her own; she pressed it close against her breast where the ache of her heart beat, and drew strength from the warmth of his body.

_Au petit estaminet... tra la la te da..._ She could feel tension and a hint of laughter in her husband, and knew they shared the same thought: the phrase swung round to its triumphant conclusion, and... _**stopped**_, both of them together on the same instant, with Gustave left to trail off alone and indignant in surprise.

"I'm sorry, darling..." Christine laughed, and got up to give him a good-night kiss. "It's an old game we used to play with my Papa — we'll do it again properly some other time. You're a very clever boy, and you sing beautifully... but now you really must lie down and go to sleep."

Gustave subsided back into the pillows, glancing up impudently through half-closed lashes. "Will Father tell me a story?"

"Gustave, _**no**_." Raoul's hasty repudiation held considerable emphasis, and Christine hurried to mediate.

"Maybe one day he'll tell you some real fairy stories, about the korrigan or the ankou... but not at bedtime," she added firmly with a little shiver, remembering a terrified night in her father's arms when she'd thought she'd heard the ankou's wagon outside. "...Raoul, I need to talk to you."

Closing the stateroom door quietly behind them, she tucked her hand into her husband's arm and smiled up in reassurance, savouring her news.

Raoul gave her a quizzical look in return, rather ruefully surveying his own half-dressed state. "There's about half an hour left to dress for dinner... Is it urgent? You'd better come in." He was leading the way to his own cabin, and she followed.

The room was considerably tidier than when she had seen it last, on that night — that night of a ruinous past which she was finally beginning to believe they had put behind them. The bed was turned down for the night and the two chairs ranged neatly against the rather spindly table; the remainder of Raoul's evening clothes were draped across the top of the trunk that stood ajar, where he had clearly been interrupted in dressing. At the moment, having gone straight to the washstand, he was feeling around on the top for a collar-stud, glancing back at her.

"What is it, Christine? Nothing serious, I hope."

"Yes — no..." She broke off, feeling foolish, as if the decision still hung over her and only the act of telling him in itself would make it final.

Raoul had halted in mid-movement, catching her concern. She went to him, setting her arms about his waist in mute request, and felt the unquestioning comfort of his embrace in answer.

Held within that shelter, she took a breath. He had begged this of her, and now... A sudden sinking terror had hold of her in place of the anticipation: if he had not meant it, then— Oh, what had she done?

"Raoul, I — broke the contract."

The leap in his eyes repaid everything she had ever feared; utter, vaulting faith and joy. His arms tightened around her almost convulsively until the breath caught in her throat — let her go, only to wrap her close as she clung to him in her turn.

"Christine—"

But her mouth was on his and they were drowning in awareness of each other, her senses giddy with the wakening flood: the hint of soap beneath the warm scent of him, the wild pulse at the angle of his throat, the long muscles that moved beneath her touch on shoulders and back and thighs... A little biting pain at her breast was the pin of her brooch crushed between them; she held him off, briefly, to guide his fingers down to unfasten it, and to soothe the tiny wound at his caress. Her heart was leaping so hard against his hands that she thought he must see it, and memory drew that touch down faster, more urgently, every remembered line of his body moving upon hers—

A small sound. She thrust against him. "Raoul..."

But she could not bring out the words at the last, as the heat rushed into her face; could only offer herself mutely, flagrantly, as her own body quickened in desire — demanded, through the sudden roaring in her ears. "Raoul, please—"

She could feel the shock of understanding run through him, and pressed closer with a gasp. Comprehension, and his own aching need.

"We can't." It was jerked out as if from an immense distance. "The doctors — your—"

She found that she could laugh, suddenly, with a great tenderness. "Darling, do you think La Sorelli — Vespina, with a half-dozen acknowledged lovers — that any woman on the stage can afford to find herself carrying again? If you had spent ten years as I have, with dressing-room gossip..." _If you had told me — if you had only asked—!_

But she was kissing him again and they were stumbling across the cabin, his breath as hot as her own.

"It will be all right." She pulled him down beside her onto the sheets, half-dizzy with renewed knowledge of his presence. Their movements, long-forgotten, were very sure. "It will be all right. We'll be very careful..."

* * *

Drifting upwards through deep water.

Christine stirred a little in her husband's arms without regret, surfacing slowly, through relived memories of desire, to the sound of his quiet breathing and an assortment of not unpleasurable aches. There were some respects, clearly, in which they had not been careful at all... She laughed a little, remembering, and got an amused interrogative from Raoul.

"The other night, when I came in here to find you — I came creeping along that corridor as if I were carrying out an illicit affair. And yet here I am now, _in flagrante_ with my own husband... and I feel I could shout it to the whole world."

"Oh, I've no objection." Raoul chuckled, and reached over to retrieve his watch from a waistcoat pocket, surveying it sleepily. "You could still make it down to dinner, dear — if you wanted to make a start with the passengers of the _Persephone_, that is?"

"Idiot." Christine tweaked him in mock-reproof and curled closer, nestling into the curve of his shoulder. "Can't you see I'd rather stay here, with you...?"

His breathing was deep and slow beneath her, like the calm of the sea. One hand idly traced the curves of her waist, an exploration without urgency and without intent, and she stretched catlike, sated, under his touch, with a soft sound of contentment.

He tightened his hold a little in response. "Better make the most of what privacy we have... We'll be sharing third-class on the way back—"

"Way back?"

"There's nothing for us now in New York: no reason to stay. If we're lucky we can dodge the crowd — Célestine will talk, but let her, maybe they'll miss you along the way..." He had begun absently twining his fingers in the ends of her hair, as he had done in those first days of their marriage, and for a moment she lost track of what he was saying. "...exchange for third-class tickets will repay some of what we owe, the backers will have to wait for the rest..."

"Can we do it?" Too late in any case, but she couldn't help but ask. She pulled herself up on her elbow to face him. "Raoul, can we clear the debt?"

"I think so." Steady reassurance; a hint of apology. "But we need to get back to Paris as soon as possible, start negotiations... you won't mind another ocean voyage so soon?"

"Mind?" Christine let him draw her down again beside him into the warmth of their tumbled bed, held safe within the panelled walls of the cabin that had witnessed reunion from despair. The long sway of the _Persephone_'s shouldering hull rocked them almost imperceptibly, and the world beyond the waves ebbed and sank away, washed clean of all power to hurt or to harm. "These last few days... oh Raoul, sometimes I wish we could spend the rest of our lives like this — out at sea, suspended between places and between times, without demands or claims or greed. It's foolishness, I know—"

"No, not foolish. Never foolish, Little Lotte." His mouth was muffled in her hair, with little soft kisses pressed across her temple and behind her ear, and she shut her eyes, yielding to that murmuring comfort. "There are other ships — other ways—"

His sudden intake of breath ran through both of them, excitement in his voice. "Why not? It could be managed: no luxuries, no liners. When all this is over — when we're free — a few weeks, a few months — we'll take a slow boat to the South, just the three of us. Some tramp steamer with rust-streaked scuppers and salt-caked smokestacks, carrying cargo for the banana trade from port to port and down through the tropics... and everywhere we touch shore, you'll sing. No great galas or glittering opera houses, just an audience and a hall, and the music. And once we leave... we'll be Monsieur and Madame Nobody again, without pressmen or photographers. Raoul and Christine Chagnet and their son can travel light, with few possessions and fewer cares—"

"—just a cramped cabin and a strip of sun-baked deck?" The idea was half-appalling, half-enchanting. And utterly crazy, she told herself: reality for them would be some little house in the banlieue in six months' time, not running away to sea... "But what on earth would we find to do, out on the ocean day after day?"

"Watch the sea go by... forget ourselves." Raoul stretched and lay back, slipping one hand beneath his head. She caught a sleepy teasing gleam in the glance that met hers. "I'll try to remember enough from my cadet days to make myself a little useful on deck... we'll get out my old fiddle for Gustave. The grandson of the great Daaé should be able to pick up enough to play a hornpipe or two."

Christine laughed, entering into the spirit of the game. "And what of me?"

"Why, you'll sing the mermaids out of the water and the birds from the tropic shores." The drowsy note of nonsense caught at her heart, unexpectedly sweet. "You'll outshine the bird of morning and put the sunset to shame; you'll be the girl on the prow..."

Fresh-washed and not yet slicked down, his hair curled a little under his cheek, spilling over the pillow as silky-fair and unmanageable as Gustave's own. Christine reached across and brushed it aside, dropping a kiss on the little curve at the corner of his mouth.

"Oh Raoul, you _infant_..." They'd dreamed together in the dusk so long ago, in the days when she'd seen fairies on the heath and ships had sailed to adventure in the flickering embers at Papa's feet; they'd grown and changed and met again, and dared to dream of sunlight and summertime. And then somehow they'd lost each other... and lost how to dream.

Today she had thrown away a fortune in fees and cast their future to the winds — ruin was certain and recovery insecure. And yet... for all the unknowns that lay ahead of them, she could not regret one minute of it. New joys and new dreams awaited them hand in hand, twinned faces of the same trust, and the long dread was lifted at last.

Oh, they would argue and misunderstand one another, she knew that, and Raoul would snap at Gustave when his head ached, and she would hold her tongue to keep from quarrelling and then blame him in silence for not guessing what she had not said... faults of ten years' standing were not so easily changed. And none of them were saints, Gustave least of all: but it was so hard not to spoil him just a little...

Smiling, Christine settled back against her husband's sleepy warmth. The love that had laid her open to the greatest pain was once again her shielding rock, and the last shadow was lifted; and with her head nestled on his shoulder, she knew herself for the first time in years to be utterly and completely at peace.

~o~

* * *

_(A/N: This was always intended to be the end of the story... but I did want a glimpse at how things turned out, further down the line, and then Gustave picked up a piece of newspaper blowing in the dust..._

_So there is, in fact, an Epilogue to come.)_


	7. Epilogue: A World With No More Night

_...in which we glimpse the phantom of a Phantom..._

**Epilogue: A World With No More Night**

"Gustave, slow _**down**_. You can't possibly expect your mother to keep up that pace in this heat—"

It was the third time in the last quarter-hour that Raoul had had to call their son back since they left the water-front here in Paramaribo, and a certain note of frustration was beginning to make itself felt. Christine, who had paused to lean against the trunk of one of the trees that brought welcome shade to the Gravesandestraat, thrust damp wisps of hair back from her eyes, admiring the apparently inexhaustible energy with which the small figure came galloping back down the hill, darting from porch to porch in some undisclosed game of his own.

Her husband was looking rather anxiously at her, and she smiled up at him, grateful for the supporting arm he had slipped around her shoulders. In the creamy linen of the tropical kit they'd bought in distant grey Paris — and in which both he and Gustave had been living almost constantly for the past month and a half — he was far more comfortable with this draining heat than she was; the flimsy fabric of her gown dragged and clung and her head was beginning to ache fiercely beneath its high-pinned weight of hair. It was not the hot sun itself: they'd had that on board, and for all the shady hats and canvas screens that Raoul had sought to rig up, her throat and arms were ripe and brown now as those of any farm-girl from the Midi, while her husband and son were as frankly tanned as the rest of the deck-hands.

No, the sun was an old friend, and she'd thought she'd known how to accommodate herself to its vagaries. It was the damp, sucking heat that seemed to breathe out of the vast greenness all around, from the vivid pale growth in the fields surrounding the city to the vast walls of forest that lined the rivers upstream, as far — and further — than the eye could see. It was as if every step up the gently curving street was wilting her strength like a starched collar beginning to droop. Even Raoul was beginning to flag a little: she could see the sheen of sweat at his wrists, where a faint ticking of hairs glinted pale against his tan, and he'd taken advantage of the forced halt to catch his own breath.

Only Gustave seemed impervious to fatigue, joyfully letting off steam with all the enthusiasm of one who had been a week and a half on board since their last port. She returned his beaming grin as he came crashing down the last few metres of the dusty street.

"Aren't these houses wonderful, Mother? Like the gingerbread houses we had when I was little, when the icing curled round and round and all the patterns matched up to make bigger patterns..."

Startled, Christine looked a little more closely at the intricate woodwork that surrounded them, impressed. Gustave noticed things — but not always the things that one would expect from a lively ten-year-old.

"Hendrick was right," Raoul was saying in an undertone beside her. "We should never have tried to find the place in this midday heat... I don't suppose his friend is expecting us for hours yet: do you want to go back?"

Christine wavered for a moment, tempted by the prospect of a cool drink down on the Waterkant, or even the privacy of their cabin with the screens up, where she could lie down in nothing but her chemise and sponge away the prickling perspiration. But no — the _Arauca_ would be busy unloading by now.

Instinctively she glanced back towards the waterfront where they had docked this morning, but the streets through which they had climbed hid the near edge of the river from view. Sturdy modern houses with slatted shutters and little outbuildings behind them lined the lower town, with fanciful balconies and fretted porches blossoming forth in curlicues of wood from the older quarter nearby. Here on the Gravesandestraat the houses straggled higher in all their sunbleached glory.

"Let's go on up to the end of the street at least," she said finally, straightening with a sigh. "It can't be that much further now... and we might get a view."

She let Gustave take her hand and tug her eagerly upwards — it was really not a steep slope by Paris standards, scarcely even a hill: if only the air were not so stifling here — aware of Raoul's silent concern at her heels. He was blaming himself for having set out on this expedition against the cautions of the agent, Hendrick, she guessed; but with hours to pass before they could return aboard the _Arauca_ with any degree of comfort, and the whole of the city of Paramaribo to explore, none of them had seen any reason to wait before seeking out Hendrick's French-speaking friend who lived up on Heerenstraat, and would be delighted to show them around on the little man's recommendation...

Hendrick had been a real find. Raoul claimed to have picked him at random off the list of recommendations he'd got at their last port of call — at least, he'd flushed and declined to take any credit for the discovery — but when they'd cabled ahead before the _Arauca_ left, Hendrick had undertaken to arrange everything for them. And he had been as good as his word.

Short and unprepossessing in appearance, with receding dark hair and a single gold tooth that had fascinated Gustave, he had introduced himself on the dockside and proved kind and rapidly indispensable. He'd arranged everything for the concert she was to give tomorrow night, even though none of them had been able to pin down a definite date until the ship should actually arrive off the river-mouth: venue, accompaniment, publicity. The latter, they'd discovered early on, was essential — so much for Raoul's ideas of anonymity — but here in a world where a mere glimpse of their son's fair hair was enough to draw a chattering crowd of children of all hues, all wild with curiosity, notoriety had a more innocent feel.

"Father, quick, there's a ship coming in!"

Gustave had dashed ahead again, to a little dusty square where the streets met — a hand-bill for her own performance had been freshly pinned up on the end wall of one of the houses, she noted, with amused appreciation of the little agent's efficiency — and was gazing out over the wide expanse of the river. As if to emphasize his urgency, the long call of a steamship's whistle echoed at that moment from below.

With an apologetic glance at her, Raoul lengthened his stride swiftly to join his son, unslinging the strap of the field-glasses he was carrying around his neck. By the time she caught up with them a few moments later, he was steadying Gustave up on a low stone wall for a better view, and they were trading the glasses off between them in a joint attempt to make out every detail of the distant activity on the decks of the newcomer.

The _Arauca_ could be seen now, a familiar battered white hull with the bustle of coaling and unloading all about her, and beyond her on the open moorings the big steel-hulled barque _Valdez_ and a cluster of smaller two-masters; there was the city spread out like squares of wedding-cake threaded by canals and the ribbons of tree-tops; and out beyond the purple-lobed flower of an old fort on the river, she glimpsed the long black-funnelled shape of the other ship coming cautiously in, a dark smudge against the bright haze of the water.

Another deep whistle. (And so _**that**_ was the chord Gustave had been trying for, over and over again on the strings of the old violin; a distant, preoccupied part of her mind noted that she must remember to ask if he could have a few hours to practise at the keyboard before her rehearsal with the accompanist tonight.) A little welcome breeze stirred, scattering dust and scraps of paper.

"KWIM... _Prins...Willem_." Raoul had the glasses and was reading off the ship's name at extreme range. "Why, that will be the New York mail steamer, the Dutch West Indies mail service. Now I wonder—" He broke off. "Hold on a minute, Gustave. The strap's caught... Here. Take the case."

He passed field-glasses, case and all over to the eager child, and held out his other hand with a smile to his wife, who slipped her own arm through his.

"There won't be any mail for us, surely." Christine glanced back at the big steamer still creeping into dock.

"No, but I thought we might get hold of a newspaper... Hendrick will know who takes them hereabouts."

"Why, do you think someone might have assassinated the American President? Since we last made port?"

She was laughing at him — for someone whose last contact with New York had been dedicated to ensuring they barely set foot in the place, this show of interest was unexpected to say the least — and he raised the most innocent of brows in response. "How about the end-of-season review on the New York Met?"

Now that was a genuine temptation. She wavered, ruefully — hadn't they set out with some idea of forgetting the rest of the world? — and tacitly conceded the point with a squeeze of his arm, returning the smile in his eyes.

"This one's an American paper, Mother—" Before she could stop him, Gustave — whose attention had slipped from the ships in the distance to the closer attraction of the focus mechanism between his hands — had jumped down with an audible thump and dashed off to retrieve a tattered sheet from the corner of the square. "Here, look—"

She tried not to recoil as the ancient newsprint was presented eagerly in front of her; Raoul, who had no such compunction where their son's various unsolicited gifts (extending, on one occasion, to a weakly flapping flying-fish) were concerned, extracted the remnants deftly from Gustave's grasp for disposal. "Gustave, I really don't think—"

Abrupt silence. She felt the shock run through him.

"Raoul—"

No answer.

"Raoul!" She caught at his arm, seriously worried now — he'd paled beneath his tan — and he shook his head and came back to her as if returning out of deep water. But he was still staring down at the page in his hand.

"My God — ten years — it can't be—"

She went white in her turn, memory breaking over them both. Ten years: ten long years. Oh, why could the past never let them be? And if it came to claim her now—

Gustave.

She was ice-cold despite the heat. To claim _**Gustave**_—

"Mother? Mother, don't squeeze so tight—"

Raoul's hands were over her own, gently but insistently loosening fingers that had clamped on her son's arm without even knowing it, and were clinging with bruising force.

"Christine..." She could see nothing in his face now but concern for her: a glance was spared to reassure Gustave. "Christine, please — are you all right?"

"Show me. I need to know." She wrenched her hands free from the warm clasp that had them imprisoned, twisting them unconsciously together. "Don't try to shield me again — I can't bear it — I need to _**know**_—"

"Ten years ago...?" But his eyes were quick with comprehension. "Darling, forgive me — I never meant to scare you. See—"

He stooped quickly for the sheets that Gustave had recaptured, underscoring one column lightly with a gesture. "Memories, yes... but happier ones, I think, for you..."

The print blurred before her gaze, months old, mud-stained and weathered: but one name leaped out to prominence from among the dense mass of English, catching her eye even as it must have caught his. "Miss Meg GIRY—"

Meg! It couldn't possibly — it couldn't be — was it? after all this time—

Christine scanned the close-set paragraphs, aware of the faint stir that was Raoul's breath on her ear as he leaned over her shoulder. _Vaudeville star in Broadway breakthrough... former Ooh-La-La girl... Paris, France... box office to rival Geo. ... petite, vivacious Mlle Giry, managed by her formidable mother..._

"She took me to you." Raoul's voice held a ghost of the hoarseness of that night. "Madame... she tried to warn me..."

"Hush—" Christine reached up to touch his cheek and draw the sting of that ancient pain; for her own part, she remembered Meg's laughter by gaslight, in the dressing-rooms with their scent of stale paint and rouge, and in the wings. Meg's vivid mischief had stood out from among a dozen girls on stage all drilled into perfect unison, all turning in the same fluid line — she would never have won approval in the corps de ballet, Christine understood that now, Meg had been too much the individualist, but she had been a merry, earthy friend who had done her best to keep the other girl's feet on the ground and her head from out of the clouds, and they had lost touch far too easily.

And now she was a queen on New York's Broadway, plucked from cheap entertainment as the reigning star of a show that three months ago had promised to run and run: _the daring rhythms of 'Floradora' couple with melody to rival the sweep of a 'Merry Widow'... Meg Giry is glorious in the great solo number... all New York is guessing which of our best tunesmiths can own the pseudonym behind this utterly original musical development..._

"Little Meg..." Christine couldn't have kept her own eyes from sparkling with entirely vicarious pleasure if she had tried. She turned to her husband, face alight. "She deserves this so much: she must have worked so hard, for so long — and now this. I wonder who—"

The words trailed off as she caught sight of his expression. Gustave, looking in distress from one to the other of his parents, put out a tentative hand: Raoul wrapped an arm around his shoulders almost fiercely in response, drawing him close.

"I wonder who." His tone was utterly flat, guarded tight. "You haven't read to the end, then... Neither had I."

"Not... not quite." Christine bit her lip, glancing down again to the foreign type whose words abruptly seemed to swim out of reach, and then back to his face. "Raoul, what—"

"Doesn't this sound just a little familiar? Utterly original music — nameless composer — star plucked from obscurity... and then _**here**_... the last words... a joke, a mere joke..."

She followed his gaze.

"The genius behind it," Raoul translated slowly, deliberately, "is said to _**wear a mask**__—_"

He broke off, leaving the echo of that hanging between them. "You were right — from the first, you were right. He's back. It's _**him**_."

And the past yawned open again before her, dark and sweet and terrible. Every fantasy set free... a lilting, sinister dance to sweep her away, back into that mesmerised world of beauty and death. If they had gone to New York—

_**New York**_.

"Did you know?" She flung that at Raoul. "Is that why — when you begged, pleaded with me to break that contract— _**Did you know**_?"

Webs within webs, and the foundations of her world threatening to fall apart—

But the white shock on his face gave her the truth before even his answer. "Know?— how could I know? We thought him dead—"

"Mother..." A thin plea against the raised voices, that brought them both abruptly back to the present.

If she was scaring herself, then she was scaring Gustave far worse. She was no longer that gullible girl: she was a full-grown woman, with a family of her own.

"Darling... darling, it's all right..." She went to put her arms around him as he burrowed his face into her side like a small, frightened animal, and let her own head rest in the hollow of Raoul's throat as her husband moved to hold them both.

"Raoul — what are we to do?" And this time the words came out on what was barely a breath.

He was silent for so long that she looked up, her own mind racing with wild schemes, fierce determination— But his eyes were stunned and a little wide above her, scarcely seeing her face.

"Nothing," Raoul said slowly, as if realising something at last. "Christine, we do nothing — it's over."

Her heart contracted painfully. "No! Raoul, you can't—"

"Don't you see?" The words broke over hers, faster now, gathering force. "It's _**over**_: it's ended at last. You're free... _**he**_ is free."

"Free...?" One little word: dawning hope.

Raoul took a breath, eyes beginning now to blaze.

"Don't you see what this means — this stage success? Yes, it's _Don Juan_ all over again... but he has everything now that he wanted: fame, acclaim, and beauty and talent at his fingertips. A voice to mould, a muse to inspire, a dancer to set all heads swirling... and all the while Christine Daaé is here, safe, forgotten — free." He bent to kiss her swiftly, laughing with the sheer heady relief of it. "Think — even if you would, even if you could, do you imagine Meg Giry would allow any other woman now to make a claim on what she enjoys by right?"

"You think he — _**Meg**_?" She was half-flushed, half-appalled, and Raoul's look of ironic query sent the traitorous blush mounting even higher.

But if that reminder was revenge, it was a gentle one; she reached up in her turn to take another kiss, and was released as Gustave too raised his head, eyes bright with curiosity. "Later, Gustave," his father put in rather hastily, while Christine went pinker than ever.

_Free_... It was a tentative, unaccustomed idea. No more thoughts of darkness...

Years had come, and gone, and she had heard nothing, seen nothing. In the end she had begun to believe — as she had let Raoul believe from the start, when perhaps she should not; but what else could she have done? — that _**he**_ was at last gone indeed, at some time and place forever hidden to the world.

Yet when, even so, she'd thought of the past, it had always been as a trap; dark siren waters whose drowning grasp would reclaim her forever if they could, poppy-drugged memories that could be shut away but never drained with impunity. And now — to be free... It was like an aching tooth pulled at last; the old habitual pain replaced by a strange absence, itself a loss.

Free... because _**he**_ was free. Of her.

And it had taken Raoul, who had known no sympathy with that other, to glimpse the truth in that: to know oneself desired, obsessively, eternally... was oneself to become a trap. She knew, none better, the hours that Meg must have worked under her taskmaster for this success, the sweat and tears behind the perfection of every breath and every step. That little, unworthy sense of loss was the knowledge that something she'd feared to crave had been... replaced.

"I'm glad." She tried out the words and found, gratefully, that they were true. "For Meg, for — for them both. I'm glad this happened." Not Raoul's uncomplicated shining joy, not the merry nostalgia Meg deserved, but a cautious relaxing into relief like a knot of tension eased out beneath strong hands: a release that would flower, in time, to pleasure that was genuine happiness.

Only... she would take care to keep Gustave and Raoul from New York. And she would not, now, follow that first generous impulse and go herself to congratulate her old friend. It would not be wise, perhaps, for Christine Daaé to invade Meg Giry's life: not wise, and maybe not kind. At least, not yet.

Down on the waterfront the mail steamer was lying alongside, with a bustle of activity all around her. The faint breeze was rising more strongly now, carrying scents of all the vast growing life that surrounded the city: moist breathing green with a rank hint of the river, backyard odours, hot bleached dust, and the heady sweetness of some tropical bloom — Paramaribo in all its vitality, laid out waiting for them. At her feet the crumpled paper stirred a little where she had dropped it, lifted, and began to drift away. The hand-bill for the concert flapped once, sharply, where it was tacked to the wall beyond, her own name rippling into momentary life.

It was not the New York Met. It was not even the Great White Way; there would be no furs and no bright lights, no autographs or loafers at the stage door... and if there were flowers or champagne afterwards, they would be of Raoul's finding, conjured with a flourish out of chipped glasses to transform some cramped little backstage office, and all the dearer to her for that.

She could have all those things for the asking again, if she wanted them — and in time perhaps she would. But there were other things, first, that she wanted to take a chance on: more of life, and arms that had been empty too long.

And for now... there was the music itself. Always the music.

"No regrets?" Raoul was smiling at her, but the query was a little anxious.

"None." She smiled back, straight into his eyes, remembering. "And you?"

"Not while I have you." And it was the unthinking sincerity of that which caught at her heart and took her breath away. For a moment, she was almost dizzy in the knowledge of what they shared.

Gustave was fidgeting at her side, impatient with self-absorbed adults and their mysteries and eager to be up and away. The field-glasses on their long strap bumped at his waist, and in his well-worn tropical whites he had the air of an intrepid explorer. Raoul followed her gaze, and dropped a hand on his son's shoulder with a grin. "Come on then, Mungo Park... and didn't I promise to rule you out some more manuscript paper before tonight?"

"Yes, but with pencil if you please... the ink runs when I write..." The youthful composer looked up at his copyist a little shyly. "But don't you think we might buy some on the way?"

"Out here? I hope so, but I wouldn't count on it." Raoul squeezed the boy's shoulder with easy affection and let go, and with a backward glance Gustave led off once more, small and fair and ardent in the noonday sun.

Watching them together, Christine felt the last chill of the past slip away, heart-healed and whole. They had a son to be proud of, Raoul and she — a bright child of the summertime — and what they had made between them the moonless dark could not take. Not now. Not with ten years gone.

And in that sudden serenity she knew that she would write to New York after all; not to reopen the past that had brought nothing but woe, but to make peace, from that haven it seemed they had all found at last. To give... to give a little of what she had in such abundance, and to take upon herself a little of that cost that was hers also. And to tell... a little of what should long since have been told.

Christine de Chagny slipped her hand into her husband's arm and leaned her head upon his shoulder; and together, strolling slowly because of the heat, they went to join their son where he waited for them, on Heerenstraat in the sunlit noon.

_FIN_


End file.
